It’s Ok to be Mad

Some days all I feel is anger. I’m mad because I have this disease, mad that I have to do injections all the time, mad that my life revolves around appointments, drug delivery schedules, power outages, medical supplies, drugs, insurance. I get mad that my disease has prevented me from working in the field I love, and I get mad that my husband works his body and soul to the ground to provide for us because I can’t, but yet we still need insurance because the drug I need would otherwise cost over 1.3 million dollars a year.

It’s a funny thing to mad at what amounts to nothing. I’m mad at my disease, but I can’t yell at it, or hit it, or confront it. There is no physical object to aim my anger at unless I aim it inward toward myself. I get mad that I’m one very small person with no influence in the world, and that I have no way to make people see what it’s like to be a person with an invisible disease. I can’t make the ones around me understand how much I hurt both mentally and physically, and I can’t tell people why I’m mad because honestly there isn’t really a good reason. I just am.

Every time I think I have this disease under control, and like I can take back my life again, something happens, and it’s like I am losing my life all over again. Not to mention how hard it is hear that others have it “worse” than me. Because lets be honest, no one person has it worse than another, but rather each person suffers with their own illness in a unique way that is either manageable or not for them. So that makes me mad to, when someone thinks that I should be grateful for what I have and what I have not been through, because I honestly think that’s a load of bullshit. I have every right to be mad about what has happened to me, the same as the next person. I may not have rods and plates and screws in my body, but still live my life around this disease, and in that way we all are the same.

So be mad, it’s ok, scream at the world, curse whatever god you believe in for giving you this disease, or whatever disease you have. Be mad that you can’t do the things you want, or that they are hard, or whatever it is that others make you feel like you should just except. Pound your fists into the ground, throw something, break something, run until you collapse if you need to. Tell your friends and family you don’t want to talk to them today, and that there isn’t a good reason other than your just mad. Take a mental health day from work, and stay in bed, snuggle with your pets, eat an entire tub of ice cream. Get really high and watch dumb cartoons. Do whatever you need to to work through your anger and madness. Don’t try to run from it or bottle it up. Keeping it inside you will only poison your soul and ruin all the things that truly are good in your life. Sometimes you can’t do anything to make it better, sometimes you just have to be mad, until you’re not anymore. You have to ride out the emotion like a roller coaster until you finally have the chance to get off.

In the immortal words of “Big and Rich” if your going through hell, keep on moving. I doubt you would willing stand in the flames and let the devil torture you if you had the chance.

Remember that no matter what you have been through, or what you are going through, it doesn’t matter if it’s easier or harder than what someone else has gone through, you have a right to be mad about it.